Constant 3: Chapter 3-3 (Patreon)

The next scene from chapter 3, in its nearly-complete form. I don't antcipate any major changes to this section before publication, although it's a very important scene for reasons that become clear later. Enjoy, and feel free to comment or leave feedback.

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Three: The Story of Julia (Proxy)

Julia wanted to wipe out the remaining traces of masculinity she saw in me. Lurking behind those c-cup mounds jiggling on my chest, the curve of my hips or flowing hair, she detected traces of the man I used to be. And that man, she wanted to punish. That man, she wanted to make suffer. And what better agony, she thought, than trapping him in a humiliating prison of lace and satin, frills and bows, in public view? Tight and slinky or flowing and flouncy—lingerie and dresses to rehabilitate the reprobate, in her mind, one prong of a multi-fronted assault on those final remnants of David Saunder.

            And so, to the mall.

            I felt a little guilty, to be honest. From the very start, she tried so hard—like, really, really hard to be this tough, hard-as-nails bitch, stiff-backed, stern-voiced, thin-lipped and frigid, ordering me about and taking control of my life. No doubt she picked that pink-and-black jumpsuit, a relic from the Clinic hanging in my closet, and paired it with pink pumps and black knee-high socks, to embarrass me. And, like sure—it just screamed ‘girly’, the way it hugged my ass and flashed my thighs. Ostentatious as well, at least compared to her casual jeans and t-shirt, a sort of prissy prep-school vibe.

            But I fucking rocked that little outfit, with a toss of my mane and a swipe of dramatic winged eyeliner in the style Emma taught me. Heads turned to follow my prancing walk and I was fine with that, I was used to it by this point and frankly, if I’d been out with Mel, Emma and Willow they probably would’ve picked something worse. That’s the thing Julia didn’t get: she was already behind the curve. I’d already had a month’s self-flagellating mortification by this point. I’d had a boy’s cock in my mouth—three times! A trip to mall? For fuck’s sake, this wasn’t punishment—this was fun.

            But thinking of the girls also brought guilt. I’d had to brush them off to be with Julia. Scheduling the weekend was tight, trying to run my two parallel lives. Last night Friday, end-of-week drinks with the girls at The Bends near work getting shitfaced on caffeine-laced Paranoid Android cocktails decorated with tiny fake plastic trees. Nightclub afterwards; dancing and boys and Mel desperate to get laid. Today with Julia: morning shopping, apparently, with the rest of the day a mystery. If I escaped her grip early enough, I might try popping around to Jonas’s in the evening for ramen, maybe a fondle and quick blowjob. Then Sunday: I reserved the morning for myself, though I knew Julia expected me back at hers in the late afternoon and evening. Then Home. Prep for the coming week. Crash.

            Jesus.

            Couple this with mostly-full weekdays as well—working late with Mr Connor one night, Tuesday drinks, back to Julia’s, maybe a date at Noir, maybe shopping—and those lonely weekday nights, sat alone staring out across the city until late began to feel a distant memory. I had to fall back on age-old excuses more than once: no, sorry, I can’t, I’m washing my hair—handwash my underwear—or the one a pretty young girl apparently just couldn’t say: I just need a goddamn moment to myself. Most startling of all, it was true. I did need an evening to properly wash, condition, brush out and dry my hair, or clean the ever-present, always-growing pile of delicate bras, stockings, and lace panties. And yeah, I did need some goddamn time to myself. For reasons.

            It was exhausting—fucking exhausting—and exhilarating—wonderfully exciting, this deluge of demands on Cindy’s life. I’d never been so popular. David kept busy, sure, with work, with working out, the occasional formal date and most weekends hitting the bars. But not like this; never like this. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got through it all except that Cindy seemed to have endless reserves of energy. No matter what those three weeks threw at her, I bounced back. Until the end, that is. And even then: I still dragged myself to work the next day, made it to that Halloween party, and got the job done.

            Who knew twenty-year old chicks were so goddamn resilient?

            We hit up the first couple of shops: a blouse for work for Julia, a miniskirt and a few flouncy, frilly or revealing tops for me. A little cosmetics shopping: even after nine months, I still found approaching those counters with their mirrors and endless rainbow of pots and pads and sticks of colour both daunting and baffling, but Julia was there to take charge—even if I didn’t agree with her choices.

            She sat me at the counter while Debbie, a burbling, overly-made up woman in her late twenties—who looked like she was in her mid-thirties—reeking of strong perfume gleefully attacked my face. By the third round my cheeks felt raw under heavy, cheap makeup, garish, bright and colourful—fashionable, the woman insisted, painting my lips in another layer of gloss, like, just so girls your age sexy am I right?—as I silently glared murder at Julia standing to one side, barely hiding her smirk.

            Eventually, laden with shopping bags dangling from the crook of both elbows bouncing against my hips with each step, we succumbed to the first wave of consumerist fatigue. We found a coffee shop. Julia went to the counter for a pair of lattes. Perched on the tall stools at the long counter at the window overlooking the interior mall, I waited and watched the buzz of humanity flowing past.

            Assholes in jobs like David’s and Julia’s predicted the death of shopping decades ago, and they were wrong—like, so wrong. Endless pundits, articles in trade magazines, op-eds and online commentary: from assumptions about the decline of consumer capitalism to post-pandemic collapse of the public space, so-called experts declared the mall dead and buried, nothing to see here, folks.

            The crowds milling through the mall never read the obituary, apparently. Grey skies the colour of an administrator’s soul churned above the vaulting ceiling of the atrium, a tower of polarised glass sharply glinting in the morning light. Stretching out from our coffee-shop eyrie, three floors of consumerist glory extended into the solar-lit distance, storefront signs promising a good deal, a new you, the experience of a lifetime, game of the year, innovation, dreams, beauty, a better everything—hope, if you could afford it.

            Decades ago, sure, stores struggled, and brands died; malls closed. But they all came back, with a vengeance, with new names, branding, IPs, USPs, freebies, virtual tech, AI and good old-fashioned young, sexy staff.

            After all, the shopping mall offered something online shopping and digital experience couldn’t: weaponized nostalgia married to the physical experience and dopamine hit of buying shit. You didn’t go to the bookstore to buy a book—you went there to sit, read expensive coffees shat out a civet’s ass and to feel and be seen looking clever. Clothes—even for the boys, but especially for the girls, a truism through history—were always about the experience, now even more so: the changing room parade, the free drinks, sizing and recommendations, the social experience.

            But maybe most of all, the mall become a place to escape—shelter from the heat or cold of extreme weather, or periodic social isolation, or the collapse of state infrastructure: corporate, climate-controlled consumerist bunkers in a world that increasingly felt like a shitshow for the youngest and disillusioned.

            Nave, transept, and ambulatory; and glittering chapels ringing it all raised to beauty, hair, nail and makeup: a cathedral raised in glory to consumerism, thronged with adherents moving like pilgrims from one prayerful experience to the next.

            I sat and watched as a group of young women laughed, sparkling and happy, eyes flicking across my outfit, assessing, judging as they passed. A group of boys wandered by as well, openly staring at my long legs resplendent in their pink heels. Their assessment was somewhat ruder. One boy laughingly flashed me a V, flicking his tongue between upthrust fingers. I rolled my eyes and gave him the finger.

            When Julia returned with our drinks, I was fiddling with the delicate pink bow decorating my sock cuffs. She sat and scrolled through a list on her phone.

            “What’s that?” I asked.

            Julia looked up from the screen. “Bucket list.”

            “Bucket list?”

            “All the things I didn’t get to do in my twenties,” she said. “All the fun stuff, girly stuff I missed out on because some dickhead fucked me up so badly, I could barely cope with life, let alone enjoy it.”

            “Oh.”

            Her tone is surprisingly friendly, even if her eyes are not. “And guess what? You get to be my proxy. I’m going to live out those parts of my twenties I never got to do the first time around. Through you. How does that sound?”

            And because I couldn’t say—no, no thank you, you crazy bitch, instead I took a sip of my latte and forced a glossy smile over a coffee cup rim, stained coral with lip-prints. To be honest, it was kind of reassuring hearing her explicitly state her intentions. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who’d changed during her month away. This is what she’d wanted to do from the very start.

            Maybe, at first, she’d repressed the instinct. Maybe, before, she couldn’t admit to herself what she really wanted. Because all those outfits, the ever-more extreme clothes she forced on me, from skanky to sexy, cute to lewd, flouncy to tight and restrictive? I think she wished she could wear them herself. And with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder: did she envy the other things she did to me?

            I didn’t protest. “If that’s what you want then… yes. I mean, sure, but—” and here I plucked at the sleeve of the outfit she’d picked out for me— “why proxy? Like, this outfit? You’d look awesome in it.”

            Julia wrinkled her nose. “Fifteen years ago, maybe.”

            “No, now,” I insisted, and nearly called her ‘babe’ and remembered I wasn’t sat opposite Willow or Emma. And I suppose she had a point; it was a young-woman’s style, flashy and cute and not really Julia’s thing. But then, I’m not sure it would’ve been Julia thing fifteen years ago, either.

            “So, what else is on the list?” I ask.

            She smiled wickedly. “You’ll find out soon enough,” and drained her coffee.  “Come on—we’ve got lingerie shopping to get done.”

            We traipsed along the busy corridors to the first shop. Her sneakers squeaked a counterpoint to the delicate tap of my footfall. I struggled to keep up, the floors slippery beneath my heels, burdened by all those bags hanging from the crook of my arms. My hair flounced with each step, earrings jounced and I couldn’t imagine a more stereotypical display of femininity.

            The lingerie shop—or rather, the first one—was trashy and cheap; ie, Cindy’s kind of place, Julie pointed out to me. With panties in packs of three, and bras in vivid colours and lurid patterns, made from fabrics that scratched the skin, it was definitely the kind of place I could afford.

            “I don’t need any more bras,” I said.

            “We’re not here for the bras. Though we might as well pick you up a few. We’re here for the sizing.”
            I rolled my eyes. “I know my size.”

            “No, you think you know your size. Trust me. You’ll thank me later.”

            Trust her? Unlikely. But she was proven right: a young girl took me aside and with deft professionalism measure me and declared me an 86cm underbust, 95cm bust; or more traditionally, a 34C at the cusp of graduating to a D-cup. She recommended the larger cup-size and a little silicon cutlet for padding.

            “Shit,” I muttered.

            Julia couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “Surprised?”

            “Yeah.” I glowered at the bustier she passed me, a lightly boned brash thing in sparkly purple and pink, four removable suspenders with cheap plastic tabs loosely dangling. “I thought…”

            “What, you were a difference size?”

            “No. I knew my size. They measured me at the Clinic. I am—I was, six weeks ago—just under 89cm around the ribcage. My tits were a modest C. They’ve gotten bigger.” I glowered at the tag on the item in my grip. “I thought those chemicals had done their thing. They’re meant to be slowing down. They’re meant to… to stop, and go away, so that I can….”

            “So you can—what?” Julie asked.

            But I couldn’t answer her.

            She frowned, looked away and didn’t pursue it any further. Instead, Julia became sullen, her mood matching mine. The next few shops she dragged me into—first another lingerie shop, this one far more upscale, and then one specialising in swimwear—should’ve been joyful for her. Surely this was peak satisfaction, watching her ex-boyfriend model bras and panties, suspender belts and boudoir fashion.

            And though she perked up a bit at the sight of me in a deep-purple and black number inspired (apparently) by the artwork of Fuseli, cuffs and links dully glimmering in gold and costing more than I made in a week—I probably enjoyed it more than she did. My mood quickly lifted. Turning this way and that in the pink-lit mirrors and seeing myself reflected in triplicate, I couldn’t deny I looked pretty tasty: dark and brooding and bound in straps of ebony and gold. Like, if Jonas saw me like this, he’d probably have a stroke. And if Chad saw me in this—or Mr Connor, even!—I exhaled as I stroked my flanks beneath the grip of straps and buckles and imagined stronger hands there, a firm grip, a tight embrace.

            Julia, meanwhile, could barely summon up the energy to pick out a tiny string bikini for me. I gripped the scraps of fabric in my hand and vowed to never wear them. Nine months as Cindy and I hadn’t had reason to go swimming yet, and I saw no reason for that to change. I then noticed her glum expression and grinned. Holding it up to her, I said: “I mean, yeah, I’d look awesome in this but know what? So would you.”

            She frowned and put it back on the rack and led me out of the shop.

            Her mood switched instantly, though when she spotted an upscale boutique on the higher, more upscale floor of the mall. A quick escalator trip and we stood outside Hestia.

            “Okay.  Now this should be interesting,” she said.

            I eyed the shop. It looked expensive; expansive and well-decorated with a somewhat pretentious mythological theme going on, mannequins on pedestals like classic statues modelling overpriced though elegant evening wear for men and women (though mostly women). “What’s so special about this place?”

            “Come,” she said, grabbing me by the hand and leading me in. We passed through the ubiquitous security scanners and under quiet cameras into the store, and she pulled me towards a large, full-body mirror set in an alcove modelled after a Grecian shrine from antiquity. “This is one of ours,” she said.

            “A mirror?”

            “No,” Julia said, and her voice filled with pride. “Much more than a mirror. You know those display screens you’ve seen in other shops? The ones that project your image, let you try on virtual outfits without the bother of doing it for real?”

            I nodded. Useful, though the girls preferred the physical experience, the changing booth scramble, the awkward fit, the giggling reveal.

            “And you’ve probably had a few that made recommendations—A.I. powered ones offering in-stock shopping suggestions?”

            I nodded.  “Yeah. They suck.” I remembered my smart apartment at the Clinic, the wardrobe and its struggle to determine who I wanted to be. “Mostly.”

            “Not anymore,” she said, and stepped in front of the mirror. “This is one of ours; one of mine, really. My team’s been developing this for the past few years, and we’re trialling it in select stores. It’s all hush hush, a bit of secret R&D I’ve been running with my team.

            “This screen’s linked into every shop camera’s that’s tracked us since we’ve entered. That’s at least eight separate feeds, each providing a unique data stream to the AI we’ve trained to run this thing. I’ve also arranged for special access to the whole mall’s security system, so that data’s available, too, dozens of further visual data streams to analyse. It’s also tapped our phones, any smart devices we’ve got enabled, and digs through any socials we’ve got set to public access. And if the project gets the go-ahead, we’ll tie all this to a proper data harvester service or two, access some of that juicy deep data on the consumer, everything from dating profiles to location services.”

            The mirror in front of her faded to a foggy grey—not a mirror, but a screen.

            “Now, the software I’ve developed brings this all together, connecting social media data with media res data, linked to the latest in facial and body recognition software. It’s analysing behaviour patterns exhibited during our time in the mall, and since walking through that entranceway. Teasing out correlations and trends. And it feeds this through its millions of parameters and….”

            The fog on the screen faded, and there stood Julia, or rather a digital projection of her. She wore an elegant midnight blue halter dress, a sheer lace panel veiling her bosom, and star-burst patterns exploded in glittering gold sequins across her waist and skirt. The dress swept down to her ankles and a single high slit revealed medium-height heels and sparkling dark nylons. The image moved as she moved; and she looked amazing.

            Julia beamed with pride. “It’s recommending this dress because it knows I’ve booked us in for a theatre visit later this week. It’s chosen something at a price point it knows I can afford. The style and colours are influenced by the recognition software that slots me into one of thirty-two distinct consumer groups—we’re working on making that more granular, feed it more data to create exponentially more specific and identifiable consumer types, segregated by gender, age, class, race, occupation—by where and what they eat, hobbies and holiday locations, the movies they enjoy and who they fuck.” She smiled. “Correlations between these data points create ever more precise recommendations, and purchasing patterns can return ever more relevant and applicable data back to the store owners.”

            Hands on hips, she turned this way and that a few times and gave a single, curt not. “I’m going to buy this.” Then she hesitated, gnawing on her lower lip, and turned to me. “What do you think? It’s not too… much?”

            “It’s perfect,” I said and meant it.

            Julia nodded, seeming pleased as she stepped away.  “Your turn.”

            The screen fogged over, like a magic mirror from a fairy tale, and the mists churned portentously. Plucking nervously at my hair, I glanced aside at Julia, who frowned slightly. “Is it working?”

            “Give it time,” she said. “We’ve had some buffering problems.”

            The fogs parted. And there I stood—in a man’s suit.

            The digital image only lasted a few seconds. But for that time, Cindy stood cross-dressed in a tailored men’s suit, navy blue and pinstriped, cut to slender curves, standing solidly in wingtips with a heavy watch at her waist.  She wore a pastel tie and a crisp, light blue men’s shirt, curves minimized by her blazer, single button fastened beneath her breasts. Heels and hose peeked out from her trouser legs. A darker shade of blonde swept her shoulder, and her makeup was subdued. Undeniably female, but incongruously so, and my heart hammered in my chest at the sight.

            Just as quickly, the projection flickered: Cindy, almost spilling out of a sparkly pink minidress, thin straps over her shoulder, pigtails and shiny lips, cork wedge heels. It wavered and flickered again: flared jeans, tight bum, Sin-DI concert t-shirt and peep-toed stilettos. And again: knee high boots, beige skirt, curvy under a tight sweater and wide belt, autumn colours trench coat and a cute beret. Then Cindy, again in boyish clothes with a feminine flair, cargo shorts, baggy shirt, short-cropped hair but bright lipstick and long, painted nails.

            I looked to Julia. “What happening?”

            “I—don’t know.” She looked pained. “It’s… confused.” She frowned. “You’re confusing it.”

            The screen wavered a final time. Once more a mirror, it reflected just me: pink-and-black jumpsuit, loose-flowing hair, bared thighs and arms and an open expression of mild panic.

            Julia stared at it for a long time, frowning until she signed and declared, “Let’s get out of here.”

            By the time we returned to Julia’s condo that afternoon, I was tired, rattled, hungry and desperate for a drink. She provided for two of those. She ordered in some Thai food and cracked open a chilled Chardonnay.

            “So, now what?” I asked, sinking deep into her sofa. My feet ached after their hours in heels. Spreading my arms across the back of the sofa, head back and staring at the ceiling, I was suddenly and powerfully reminded of my first time here. Then, too, my feet ached and my soul felt heavy. That night finished with the two of us, arms and legs entwined in sweaty slumber in her bed, moonlight dancing against our naked skin.

            Julia checked her list. She smiled, face lit below by the glow of her screen. “We eat,” she said. “We drink. We get dressed, do each other’s makeup. Gossip like twenty-year-olds about boys and shit like that. And then we go out.”
            I groaned. “Really?”

            “Really,” she said.

            Yes, really, and we spent the next few hours getting ready for a girls’ night out. And it was—fun, I had to grudgingly admit, if somewhat desperately so. Different, than doing the same with Mel and Emma and Willow. Julia layered everything with a healthy dose of self-deprecating irony and wry sensibility: the woman nearing forty playing at being half her age, opposite the man performing the vivacious girlfriend. We emptied out the day’s shopping bags. We drank white wine spritzers. She asked me if any guys had caught my eye at work, and I retorted by asking about her London fling.

            She gazed at me cooly. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” One finger slid back and forth along the edge of her glass of wine. “This boyfriend, this other guy.”

            “Not at all,” I said, and meant it.

            “Is it the fucking?” Julia smiled. “God, I needed a good fuck. Needed a cock inside of me, know what I mean?”

            “I’m happy for you,” I said. “Really. And no, I don’t. Know what you mean, that is.”

            “If you say so.” She drained her glass, poured herself another. “Because you sure sounded like someone who enjoys a bit of cock inside you the other night.”

            I reddened and declined to answer.

            “Shit, it’s getting late.” She reached into one of the shopping bags and tossed me the purple-and-pink bustier from earlier today.

            I opened the box and unwrapped the garment from its crepe paper wrapping. I held it up and grimaced. “Really?”

            She grinned. “Really.”

            “Not fair,” I grumbled, stripping.

            “Tonight, I’m the classy older sister.” She held a red dress up against her frame, a gorgeous item way out of my price range, bought earlier today at the kind of boutique where the woman behind the counter eyed Cindy with undisguised distrust. Julia turned this way and that in the mirror. Clearly, she liked what she saw, and smiled. “You’re the trashy younger sister.”          

            We ate noodles as we dressed. Julia brushed out my hair. Long hair, I’d realised long ago, was equal part nightmare and fantasy. It looked awesome; drew compliments; and stroking it—or having it stroked—could feel divine.

            But maintaining it was a goddamn pain in the ass and brushing out the tangles hurt like fucking hell. I swear, I spent as much time keeping this mane under control as I spent working out in the morning. More than once, I’d been tempted to hack my mane back to shoulder length. Drunk, I’d too often held scissors or a sharp knife to my scalp. Or my breasts. Sometimes, in my deepest drunkenness, even lower. Stared at myself in the mirror. Dared myself, dared Cindy. Every time, I’d backed down.

            “Ow!”

            “Oh, quit whining, you little sissy,” Julia said, not unkindly. She continued brushing, and I worked at my nails, cleaning off the day’s colour. “My dad used to brush out my hair when I was a kid. Every day. Not my mom but my dad, even though she’s the one who wanted me to grow out my hair.” Her voice softened and deepened, each stroke slowing and becoming longer.

            “Mom loved long hair. Even at the end, at the hospital, she smiled at me around all those tubes, at my hair, so beautiful, she said, thank you, and tried to stroke it but she was so weak she could barely lift her hand. Please keep it, she said, always. I don’t know why. But she’d always been a bit obsessive about the most peculiar things.

            “And at the start, when she first got sick, when she was so tired she couldn’t get out of bed some days, Dad took over brushing my hair. Then I’d go show her after, if I was allowed into her room. Seeing me with my hair brushed out and shining always brought a smile to her face. Almost always. Not so much near the end.”

            The brush ceased its motion as she took a meditative sip of wine. “Eight years old, and my dad’s trying to yank this comb through my hair, starting from the top, dragging all the tangles through. I remember crying.  It hurt. He didn’t know what he was doing. But every day it got easier. It hurt less.

            “By the time I turned nine he was a pro. Every day, we’d sit, in the morning and again at night and he’d brush out my hair and he rarely said anything but his presence behind me, every day, that solidness, stability… we were together, and that meant something. Especially after mom was gone.”

            Her voice wavered. “But I grew up. And as a teenager, you know, I didn’t have time for that kind of shit. Especially after I went off the rails for a bit, after mom died. He missed our time together, missed brushing my hair. So did I, though I couldn’t admit it, obviously. He asked to brush my hair once, when I was fourteen and I told him to fuck off, to stop trying to control me. Who did he think I was, my mother? I said.”

            She resumed brushing. “It was a cruel thing to say. It hurt him, and I remember how warm that made me feel, powerful to be able to hurt someone like that, just with words. Afterwards I felt sick but in the moment, watching him as he crumbled into himself… that was the first time I realised my own capacity for cruelty.”  The brush paused, and I heard and felt her heavy sigh. “I’d give anything to have that time with him again. Now, I’m lucky if he fucking remembers who I am when I visit.”

            “I’m sorry,” I said. My nails were clear, denuded of their earlier pink. I laid my hand flat on the table and stretched out my fingers. “I didn’t know.”

            “Yeah. Well.”  She gave a final, angry stroke of the hairbrush. “You never asked.”

            She picked a glittery bright purple for my nails. I suggested she go for the metallic silver, and she agreed. Then she revealed another of her purchases: press-on nails, quick-binding and high quality but far longer than I’d ever wear.

            “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

            “Like I said, cruel,” she answered, breaking the kit open.

            Afterwards, acetone sharpness balanced against the slightly floral scent of her more upscale polish as we got to work on our nails. At first, we painted in diligent silence until Julia said, nonchalant as she fanned her fingers: “You know, you never did tell me what happened with Dan.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “Your date. The one I set up. You texted me from the toilet, said you couldn’t do it—then you disappeared to your Clinic. After, you told me nothing happened—but what did happen?”

            “Like I said—nothing.” I smiled wanly at her. “And… everything, I guess.”

            She cocked an eyebrow and waited.

            So I told her—skimming some details, obviously, like the confrontation with Steele’s man, Jeff—about the whole ordeal. Dan’s late arrival. Steak and mushrooms, red wine and tedious conversation. The guy’s arrogance and dismissiveness, and how he kept cutting me off until I said something he deemed worthy of his attention. The walk back to his. Making out under late-night halogen streetlight.

            “You kissed him?”

            “I mean, yeah, sure, you could call it kissing, I guess, if you want to be polite.” I grimaced in recollection. “He was all over me. Tongue down my throat. Hands on my thighs, my tits. The whole way up the elevator, and the hallway, and his condo.” My blush wasn’t entirely for show, and I left out that it hadn’t been just Dan, I’d hardly played passive victim en route to the evening’s conclusion.

            At this point, telling this story ten months into living Cindy’s life, I was way beyond worrying whether kissing a man was gay or something: I’d crossed that line in the sand so long ago, I couldn’t remember even drawing it. Those session with Crystal a few months back had expunged the seething guilt and shame I’d suppressed. Mostly. What happened, happened. I was fine with it.

            Yeah. But.

            This was different. Julia wasn’t some counsellor. We’d dated; she’d fallen in love with me. She knew me as male; she wanted to punish me as one. She yearned to see the humiliation implicit in disguising a heterosexual man as a woman and having him kiss another man.  Under that heavy expectation, I once again felt the implications of my actions. Doubt gnawed at me, and I gazed upon my glittery purple fingernails and felt the clinch of the bustier, my boobs all but spilling out of its cups and wondered, again, how I’d ended up here.

            “And that was it?” she asked. She started on the other hand, confident strokes varnishing her nail to a vivid mirrored sheen.

            “No,” I snapped. Not particularly enjoying the conversation, I started on my other hand, too. The polish was cheap; it didn’t flow well, and I was getting frustrated. Julia raised an eyebrow, her expression a clear warning. “No,” I repeated, mollifying my tone. “We drank, we made out on the sofa, he knocked the ball out of the part and made first base, second and was approaching third and wanted—well, you know what he wanted. So did I.”

            “You wanted it, too?”

            “No!” I glared at her. “I meant I knew what he wanted.”

            “Sure,” she said. “Freudian slip.”

            I swallowed a sharp retort and instead muttered, “Obviously, nothing could happen.”

            “Why not?” Her eyes sparkled with mirth.

            “Because I still had a cock back then.”

            “Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot.”

            I rolled my eyes. “So instead—”

            “Yes?”

            I mimicked fellating him, lips a moist circle, tongue tenting my cheek.

            “You said—”

            “Yeah. I tried; couldn’t do it. So drunk the whole room’s spinning. And there I was between his legs wearing—well, something like this,” I said, indicating the bustier and fishnets she had me wearing, “but classier, you remember that lingerie set you strapped me into. Black and crimson, really classy-like, and I had my heels on, tits out and on my knees, and….”

            She leaned forward and maybe it was the wine, but she’d gone a bit red in the face.

            “I couldn’t do it.” I shook my head, long hair dancing around my shoulders. “Jerked him off instead. Into my favourite pair of stockings, if you can believe it.” I still mourned their loss—they’d been my best pair.

            Julia stared at me for a long moment, eyes bright and hard, and her lips trembled somewhere between a sneer and a laugh. “Oh—David. This is perfect!” she said.

            My stomach churned with Thai noodles, wine spritzer and fear. “How do you mean?”

            “Tonight,” she said, and I swear she would’ve clapped her hands together in glee if those silvered talons weren’t still drying. “Tonight’s going to be Cindy’s big night. We’ll hit the bars. Pick up some guy. And tonight, Cindy’s going down on her first man, and I’m going to watch.”

            And because that’s what Julia wanted, that’s what happened.